Alleged Russian crime hosting service denies everything

ST. PETERSBURG web-hosting service Russian Business Network (RBN) has denied that it's a shadowy, mob-connected haven for cybercriminals as widely accused, Wired reports.

In what's apparently its first press interview since the firm's founding in June 2006, Tim Jaret of RBN emailed "We can't understand on which basis these organisations have such an opinion about our company. We can say that this is subjective opinion based on these organisations' guesswork."

The organisations he referred to include The Economist, which published an article critical of RBN on August 30, the Washington Post, which printed a similar story just a few days ago, the spam fighting operation Spamhaus, VeriSign, iDefense, the SANS Internet Storm Center and other Internet security companies and organisations.

They describe RBN as a "bulletproof hosting" service that charges criminals $600 per month for hosting -- ten times the cost of competing services -- and gives only lip service at best to complaints of abuse and criminal activity. They say it sometimes shuts down web criminals' servers only to put them back up again within hours or days. They imply that it must either be protected by Russian government officials or buy off police investigators periodically.

Spamhaus blacklists all Internet addresses assigned to RBM, listing it as " ...among the world's worst spammer, child-pornography, malware, phishing and cybercrime-hosting networks." Security vendor iDefense advises all of its clients to block all traffic from RBN.

Jaret denies that RBN is a nexus and hotbed of internet scammers, spammers, phishers and malware authors. He claims it doesn't have any more cybercrime activity than other hosting services and reacts appropriately when notified of abuse, responding to email and telephone complaints and shutting down criminal websites within 24 hours of complaint.

Regarding Spamhaus' blacklisting of RBN, Jaret said, "We tried to cooperate with... Spamhaus, and this experience showed that such cooperation wasn't constructive. Now we are considering a lawsuit as a way of resolving this issue."

He said RBN is owned by a privately held offshore company, First Connect Telecom Limited Inc. RBN's domain name is registered to Absolutee Corp. LTD., but the company's website has been down since it attracted scrutiny, supposedly for redevelopment, and its domain name registration has been recently changed.

When Wired challenged Jaret to provide the URLs for some of its legitimate customers, he demurred for legal reasons, saying, "We won't give you their names and brands as our contracts prohibit us to do this. We can give such information only in reply to formal request of officials."

Unsavory excrescence of the Russian cybermob, a crew with something of the night about them, or just another legitimate, upright but misunderstood business? Take your pick. µ

L'INQ
Wired